Word: shakespeareanly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...thing was sure from the moment the curtain rose: this King Lear was not the lean, commanding character of Shakespearean tradition. Brought to the stage of Britain's Stratford Memorial Theater by Cinemactor Charles (Mutiny on the Bounty) Laughton last week, King Lear was an eye-rolling, tongue-lolling, hand-scrabbling, dirty old man. Above a billowing green gown that looked like a collapsed circus tent (but still could not hide the hefty Laughton paunch), the famed suet-pudding face was almost obscured by a wild halo of home-grown white whiskers and an unkempt shoulder-length mane...
...have ever known." When the play was finished, apart from critics who claimed to miss polish and high oratorical style, the cheering audience was willing to go Siobhan one better. The response suggested that the production (headed for Broadway in the fall) may be one of the most spectacular Shakespearean shows yet seen...
...thrones (though these last seem to suggest the red lacquer of China rather than the rough furniture of medieval Scotland). Marie Day has designed suitable costumes; and Richard Baldridge has devised musical and sound effects, for percussion or bagpipes, that are more primitive than one normally finds in a Shakespearean production--but then I suppose Macbeth's milieu was quite primitive...
...Truthfulness obliges me to state that herein lies the chief weakness of this production. Now Robards is one of our most richly endowed native actors, and his performances in 20th-century American works have been unbeatable. But he is as yet vocally unequipped to cope with the demands of Shakespearean language. This is not surprising in view of the fact that his only previous experience with the Bard was a brief go at Hotspur last summer in Canada. Good classical diction is not achieved overnight, and some never master it after a lifetime...
...supporting roles in Macbeth are notoriously less fully rounded on paper than those in the other great Shakespearean tragedies, and thus require special efforts for appreciable individualization. In a good many cases the present cast is up to the task...